1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a billing method and device of a remote maintenance system for an industrial device and more particularly to a remote maintenance method and a remote maintenance system and device for enabling control and thorough services and billing according to the contents of maintenance.
2. Prior Art
Conventionally, it is proposed to connect an industrial device of a manufacturer to a maintenance center of a device supply vendor via a public telephone line or Internet and remote-maintain the industrial device from the maintenance center. Japanese Application Patent Laid-open Publication No. Hei 11-15520 proposes a remote maintenance system using a network and by use of this system, regardless of the installation region of an industrial device, the industrial device can be maintained.
In recent years, particularly in the semiconductor industry, the number of installed industrial devices is rapidly increased due to a sudden increase in capital investment. In such a state, the maintenance cost of industrial devices is likely to increase and it is a problem how to suppress the maintenance cost. However, the previous general billing method for maintenance is a method for billing a manufacturer for a fixed charge on the basis of the cost of an industrial device and the labor costs of service persons and even when no device is maintained actually, there is a case that the manufacturer must pay the fixed charge. Further, in the remote maintenance system disclosed in Japanese Application Patent Laid-open Publication No. Hei 11-15520, no billing method is described.
The present invention was developed with the foregoing problem in view and is intended to provide a remote maintenance method, a remote maintenance system, and an industrial device for enabling control and thorough services and billing according to the contents of the remote maintenance operation and the request destination of maintenance and enabling access limit according to the attribute of a service person, access limit according to the device state, and output limit according to the output mode.
An embodiment of the present invention is a remote maintenance system that an industrial device for executing a specific process and an operation device for maintaining the industrial device are connected to each other via a network, which provides a remote maintenance method characterized in that the operation device transmits command information indicating a maintenance command to the industrial device and the industrial device executes the process according to the received command information, generates charge information indicating the value for maintenance according to the contents of the executed process, and outputs the whole or a part of the generated charge information. By use of this method, control and thorough services and billing according to the contents of the maintenance operation performed by the industrial device can be executed. Semiconductor devices characterized in that the devices are manufactured using an industrial device managed by this billing method are also included in the category of the present invention.
Another embodiment of the present invention is a remote maintenance system that one or more industrial devices for executing a specific process and one or more operation devices for maintaining the industrial devices are connected to each other via a network, which provides a remote maintenance method characterized in that each industrial device monitors an occurrence of a trouble in each industrial device, when each industrial device detects an occurrence of a trouble, generates status information for identifying the condition of the trouble, decides the operation device to be notified of the generated status information, and notifies the generated status information to the decided operation device, and the operation device decides the troubleshooting method for the trouble of the industrial device on the basis of the notified status information and transmits command information indicating a maintenance command on the basis of the troubleshooting method to the industrial device, and the industrial device executes the process according to the received command information, generates charge information indicating the value for maintenance according to the identifier of the operation device to which the status information is notified, and outputs the whole or a part of the generated charge information. By use of this method, control and thorough services and billing according to the request destination of maintenance can be executed.